Transcendent Light
by nathan-p
Summary: A crossover with an original story I wrote. The main character is dead before we start. First few chapters are angst, and very short. Other than that...
1. The Burial

The Burial

---

_The mourners kneeling by her solemn grave __  
__Showed no signs they mourned for her. __  
__By their expressions, they might well have been there __  
__For the burial of a favored pet._

"The Martyr's Tomb," Emily Rockbridge 

---

The ground is particularly cold today, dearest. The earth is soaking into the knees of my pants, but I know you wouldn't have minded. You wouldn't have cared a bit.

Maximum is standing by my side. Iggy and Fang, too, are here. Angel, her brother, and Nudge are with Arabelle today. We felt they didn't deserve the sorrow of visiting your grave once again.

I loved you. All of us did, as a brother loves his brother.

But between you and Maximum, I think, the love was greatest. Had there been time before your death, she would have told you so.

You were a lovely pair, really. Two parts of a leadership triangle. You fit each other well.

I know this well, dearest : the tears I and the others cry today are real. We wish dearly that you could be here with us, alive. Perhaps not wholly human in any form, but _alive_. 

I tried to draw you a while ago; Nudge finally had to draw for me, sketching as I directed.

In our sketch of you, you are tall, beautiful. Hand on Max's shoulder, a laughing smile. Your eyes glimmering yellow.

Arabelle did not wish your death this way. She has said to us that she was firmly not responsible for the explosion. Not responsible for an explosion of shrapnel, enveloping you in death's shroud.

I dreamt of you two nights ago.

In the dream (which is muddled now by daily life's intrusions), you are talking with Mina. It is something about starfighters. You want to ask her something of their mechanics.

Then the rumbling boom outside, and nothing more.

_Beloved, I dreamed of your death!_

And now, today.

You are in the ground and cold today. The grey mist settles over the hillsides, and I can feel the moisture of the ground seeping through the cloth of my pants. 

After a moment of silent introspection, and a prayer for you, I set the white roses beside the tombstone and rise to my feet. I will try to finish with you.

And now, as I stand in the grey morning, Max is lit from behind. A shaft of sunlight, piercing through the clouds. For a moment, she looks like an angel, caught in the light as an insect in amber.

Then the moment passes, and once more, I am alone with the memories I do not want.

--- 

I figured it was time to unveil these characters to the public. Basically, our main character here was killed in an explosion. The narrator is a friend of hers, name of Cadmus.

I could expound upon their origin, but it would result in pages of rambling from me. All you need to know is that I created this group of characters (not MR, fools, of course I don't own MR) during November last year.

Flames, reviews, and pointless rambling welcome!

(I almost forgot -- Emily Rockbridge is not real. So don't get on me when you Google her and nothing comes up. Hey, how many people already Googled her?)


	2. Pteropus giganteus

A small introduction to the "world" before our next story :

Welcome, reader! These stories are set circa 2048 _and_ circa the current day. Yes, _and._ You will be warned when a story is occuring. Most of the stories will be oneshots, most likely angst.

The story has already opened with the death of our hero, whose name is yet to be revealed. Now, to the reflections of one who she knew well...

---

_Pteropus giganteus_

--- 

_The bat's wings in flight __  
__Echo the wind, __  
__And what the wind comes bearing __  
__Today._

"Flight of Bat and Tongue of Bird," Emily Rockbridge

---

You're -- sorry, _were_ -- one of the best pilots I ever knew. Not including myself, of course. 

Really, girl. Pulling off a barrel roll your first time in the cockpit and not tossing your cookies -- it took even me, the Almighty Mina, five tries to get over the nausea.

And come on -- it's _hard_ to keep in formation in zero-grav. Someone always screws it up, and before you know it, half the wing is on the other side of the base.

But not for you.

For a girl coming from a past running from everything, you had a surprising amount of -- whatever it is they call that ability to stand up to stuff. Courage, maybe.

What else is it called when you're chained to a chair (which is, in turn, bolted to the floor) and your greatest enemy tells you calmly that she intended everything to go down this way and you restrain the urge to snap the chains and break her neck? 

I always knew that my friends were going to die before I did, and they always would, but this is the first time it's happened.

So forgive my tears, friend.

I have class to teach, anyway. 

---

:cough: Okay, so a little incomprehensible. I'll break it down.

A wing is about 300 - 500 pilots/infantry/whatever. I have never been militarily minded.

Our narrator is over 100 years old at the time. She is a vampire. Don't ask where I got this from; I have no idea.

After the "other side" won the war (yes, we'll get to that, I swear), the space base Mina worked at was converted to a school. A very... _prestigious_ school. And, being the war hero she is (I swear, we'll get to it), she was hired to teach.

Even though she looks in the area of 20.

Yep, it's a screwed up universe she lives in.

More next time, and please God let someone have reviewed!


	3. If You Only Knew Me

If You Only Knew Me

---

What you think you see

Isn't me at all;

That's another girl,

She's not me, and

I'm not her,

So deal with it.

"Eyes of Illusion", the Killer Hamsters

---

She stands, head bowed, silent. The wind rustles in the trees behind her.

She is praying, after her fashion. Praying for the soul of the girl she killed.

_She was your age, you know_, the voices whisper.

She wills them away. But they come back.

_She was your twin_, they whisper. _Your perfect double._

She restrains herself, keeping the snarling animal down. She _will not_ submit to her animal nature. Not today.

The wind gusts suddenly, rustling her robe. The thick cloth flaps slowly, but it can't save her from the chill inside.

The chill creeping outward from her heart. The chill of the knowledge that the blood of an innocent is on her hands.

_She wasn't innocent,_ she shouts to the voices, trying to fend them off. _She killed too!_

The voices circle upon her, like wolves on a wounded deer. They accuse, pry into her guarding mechanisms.

They are always there, always ready to swoop and dive upon her, finding the chinks in her armor.

She didn't see it happen, thankfully; there are no images of an explosion branded on her retinas.

But what she _does_ see is almost worse.

Two nights after the explosion, she crept into the room where Mina was being kept. She stared down at her, all bandaged. _You did that,_ one of the voices whispered.

And Mina's eyes, focused clearly on her for an instant. Accusing eyes.

She knows that Mina didn't see anything. Perhaps a shadowy figure. A ghost. Less than a ghost.

She shrugs off the robe, revealing her plain brown attire. Not for her mourning clothes.

And, folded tight to her back, carefully threaded through holes in the back of her shirt, are wings.

Jet black bat's wings. Demon's wings.

She stretches her wings wide. They span a good twenty feet. With luck, she'll catch a good wind.

She sighs. Only in flight do the voices leave her alone.

_You can't fly forever,_ one whispers.

But it's too late.

She's airborne already, and the second Bartholomew Celine Janissi is turning loops in the cool autumn air.

But the blood of the girl she killed is on her hands.

Nothing can change that, and she knows it.

The sun goes down.

---

Okay… this one special to fanfiction, because slash is :grr: not allowed on MR anymore. Last name pronounced Jan-iss-ee. I made it up on the spot.

Anyway, yes, both of these two are named Bartholomew. They're also both female. There's a backstory, but it's long, involved, and I really don't wanna get into it.

Reviews?


	4. Note From Author

Gah. I feel really guilty for doing this, but...

There won't be any real updates until June at the earliest. That's when my school lets out this year (lousy snow days, mutter mutter).

And in answering a reviewer's question, yes, there is going to be femmeslash. Please know that this came right out of left field for me, too.

I really, really wish I had something more hopeful to say, but...

Oh yeah. I think I have a chapter of this somewhere, so there MIGHT (note that might, please) be ONE update. Maybe.

See you. 


	5. Fire

(_As I originally typed it… interesting, ain't it?)_

A/N:

Thanks to SamanthaFantasyFan for alerting me to that bit of idiocy at the end of Chapter 3. ::headdesk::cough:: Business will continue as usual, but the author will refuse to admit that she totally just copy/pasted those chapters from their MR postings into Word… my secret is out. Anywho, it will be solved momentarily.

IllaScriptor : Sweet. Ah hoff becoom daypressin'. No, I have no idea what sort of accent that is. And yes, I swear I have a plot. And wouldn't you know, it came to me in the shower…

Oh, and we shall try to keep up our angst, have a go at writing slash, and grapple with time-travel over the next chapters. I think this'll get interesting.

_Very_ interesting.

---

Fire

---

_The twisted_

_Oak-leaves_

_Fall_

_From branch to ground,_

_In the autumn wind._

"Fall Leaves," Emily Rockbridge.

---

Fire, I mused, is a very strange thing.

Almost human, in a way. Sometimes you can trust it to do as you will, sometimes not.

And sometimes you can stand very near to it and not be harmed. Other times, it'll flare up, making you flinch back a good ways. And sometimes it dies down so far you have to squint to see it flickering alive under a log.

But there's one thing about fire I doubt a lot of other people can say : It's shaped me, top to bottom.

Like my triplets (not really, but it's as close as one can get in English), my life was utterly changed just after my fifteenth birthday. By fire.

The truth of the matter is, it was random chance. But whatever -- the phoenix still flew up, relentless and evil in a very frightening way. It still flapped those huge and heavy wings and went to lighting me on fire.

What with being lit on fire and the sheer trauma of getting wings, my fifteenth year was a pretty extraordinary one. But not nearly so extraordinary as what happened when I turned _sixteen_.

That was the year I learned that there were other Bats around. Three of us, actually. Different turns of probability and fate.

Bat One, as I liked to call her, had never taken a ken to genetics. She'd run off after Arabelle had watched over her the whole night round.

Bat Two was a bit sentimental. She tended to hold the middle road. Ran off, but came right back.

And then, me. One could say I'm the dark part of this whole occasion. I'll admit it -- I probably am, from an outsider's perspective. But from inside, it just was.

You know what "it" is. The explosion. My destruction of one of us triplet Bats.

And that's what led to this whole mess.

See, from a rather complicated point of view, all this was meant to happen and it'll eventually sort itself out. BS. Right now, all it's doing is making life hard.

You see, with Bat One gone, Bat Two and me and of course, Bat One's universe, are starting to cross paths. Versions of all three Arabelles keep showing up unexpectedly.

And now, with a baker's dozen of angry mutants on my tail, I'm thinking that Bat One, were she alive, would deserve a good kick in the face for starting this whole thing.

Then the fire went out, and I ceased my rambling thoughts. It was, after all, time for sleep.

All of us need sleep.

---

A/N: Gah. Most -- well -- weird character I've written in a while. Those confused, join the club. Essentially, there are three universes where Bat exists. Therefore, there are three versions of Bat. This is version 3, the homicidal/evil one.

Also, no, I have no idea whether the baker's dozen bit is true yet. I may have to add characters from other fiction of mine.

Anyway, reviews are like mind candy.

Please don't take that wrong.


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